So I just finished reading, Arnold’s “Total Recall” book, and wow. It was quite a read. The main focuses of his book, was to concentrate on 4 different things: 1) His Bodybuilding Career 2) His film Career 3) His family/personal life 4) Politics. The book was quite a ride. It was addicting and I couldn’t put it down. Arnold’s a pretty honest guy. I believe the whole point of this book is that he wanted to show the world that his life isn’t really perfect like us. He wanted to let people know that he’s human. He may have had ups and downs in his life & career, but so haven’t we, right? So that really doesn’t make Arnold a bad guy! He may have been the world’s most famous bodybuilding champion, movie star, and governor, have all these glorifying things in his life, but he too makes mistakes, and he too can have feelings like most of us.

Pretty much, the first half of the book was mostly his bodybuilding life & career. He talked about how he got his start in bodybuilding and who his influences and heroes are who got him into it such as Reg Park and others. He talked about how he wanted to become the greatest bodybuilder in the world. Yes, he did use steroids and maybe other drugs, but he did those things when they were legal back in the day. Other than that, Arnold was a natural mostly and he really did the hard work himself. His bodybuilding stuff in the book is what interested me the most. It was really inspirational and helped me motivate my own bodybuilding dreams even more.

The movie career stuff was really cool too. Did you know that Arnold almost turned down, “The Terminator”? Did you know that Arnold was originally going to play the Kyle Reese role and the Terminator role, was to be played by O.J. Simpson? This stuff is true! Arnold explained the reason he almost turned down the Terminator was that Arnold wanted to be the hero and not the villain, so James Cameron talked him into joining the movie, by playing the Terminator instead. Arnold was also offered other interesting roles that he either turned down or the studios didn’t want him. For example, Arnold was the original choice to star in “Die Hard” as John McClane, and Arnold was the first choice to play in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report”. Other than that, I had a blast reading about Arnold’s other films too, the behind the scene stuff like Conan and all his other films.

Arnold also described what it’s like working for, James Cameron. Do you think James Cameron is a nice guy to work with? Arnold says no. Cameron has a temper problem, if you don’t give him what he wants, Cameron would scream, yell, and threaten people. He would go off in a tantrum. That’s how Cameron always is. He have to use temper for artistic integrity of his movies, his way of making the movies perfect.

The 2nd half of the book focused mostly on his political life and family life. The reason Arnold doesn’t have the big muscular physique anymore is because of his big heart surgery in 1997 and after that, he couldn’t workout as hard anymore like he used to. He still works out today and keeps in shape but not like he used to in his past.

His political stuff about becoming governor was really interesting too. He may have had ups and downs in his political career, but what he did here, was pretty amazing stuff. Reading this stuff, just made me respect his political life even more. I remember watching all that Governor election stuff when it was going on. As for all the allegations of him groping women, taking her clothes off in an elevator, etc. In the book, he says stuff weren’t true but he admits that he misbehaves badly sometimes, but all this sexual misconduct were going on around the time the Governor election were happening. These women were just trying to bring him down so they try and get Arnold to lose.

Arnold may have had two affairs with different women, one was actress, Brigitte Neilsen in which the affair happened during the filming of “Red Sonja”, right before Arnold got married to Maria Shriver. The second affair was of course, with the house maid, Mildred, in which they made a baby with, but Arnold explained that happened 14 years ago, while filming the movie, “Batman & Robin”. It may have been bad for Arnold to do all these things, yes, but you gotta give him credit for having the balls for being real about this stuff, ya know? This is why I forgive him ’cause of his honesty about everything. He admits he was bad about everything in the book. That’s another point of the book, it was a public confession. His way of publicly apologizing to the world of his mistakes. He may have separated with his wife, Maria, but the separation was, “amicable”. It wasn’t anything over something negative, it was something they had to do ’cause it was best for the kids and all.

Arnold talked about Sly, but a little bit. I was hoping Arnold would go into detail about his friendship with Sly, but surprisingly, Arnie didn’t talk about him much. Arnold first met Sly in person at the Golden Globe awards around the time Rocky was coming out in the 70’s. Sly was going to cast Arnold for, “Paradise Alley” but the role never happened. Before the Planet Hollywood team up with him, Sly, and Bruce Willis owning the restaurant chain together, Arnold said, he and Sly hated each other before then. They didn’t get along at first, but they had to bury the hatchet if they wanted to do “Planet Hollywood” together. I was kind of disappointed that Arnold didn’t talk much about, “The Expendables” movies. He did a little bit toward the end, but it was brief.

He may have had a huge ego problem, yes, true, but sometimes you need to have a huge ego, to make your dreams come true. Arnold did just that. He did whatever it took to get whatever he wanted. I respect him for those reasons. Arnold is an interesting guy, and he is somebody I would like to meet in person someday. This was a good read for any Arnold fan. If you’re an Arnold fan, pick it up soon.

Kev